Iran's success in disrupting global shipping validates the PRC's belief that the U.S. and its allies lack the resilience to withstand economic pressure on key maritime chokepoints. This bolsters China's confidence regarding a potential future Taiwan Strait crisis.

Iran's military structure is intentionally decentralized, ensuring that if central leadership is eliminated, autonomous units can continue to operate based on pre-established directives. This resilience makes traditional 'decapitation strikes' less effective and prolongs conflict.

The US's inability to achieve its objectives in Iran is not just a regional failure. It projects a global perception of weakness and a lack of appetite for total warfare. This directly encourages adversaries like China to be more aggressive with their strategic plans for Taiwan.

Despite the U.S. degrading Iran's military capacity, Harris argues Iran emerged more powerful. American actions inadvertently taught Iran and the world that it could hold 20% of the global energy economy hostage with little consequence, demonstrating a new form of leverage that military force couldn't counter.

Contrary to viewing the Iran conflict as a distraction for the US, Taiwanese observers are encouraged. They interpret US action as a defense of democracy against autocracy, drawing a parallel to their own situation with China. This bolsters their hope for American support in a potential conflict.

Military strikes on industrial targets, while tactically successful, often energize the targeted population and regime. This creates political backlash that overwhelms the military effects, ultimately making the adversary stronger and more unified, as was seen in Vietnam.

Iran's military has demonstrated capabilities far exceeding US intelligence estimates. Military planners at CENTCOM are surprised by Iran's ability to retain over 50% of its missile capacity, rapidly relaunch after strikes, and successfully use hypersonic weapons, challenging assumptions of American technological dominance in a conflict.

The high rate of munitions expenditure against Iran, a secondary power, proves the US cannot sustain a conventional, attrition-based war with China. This reality is forcing strategists to develop alternative deterrence concepts that don't rely on winning a "firepower competition" with the PLA.

The war on Iran was a "war of choice" based on a flawed assumption of imminent regime collapse. Burns argues the Iranian regime is designed to withstand decapitation and predictably reacted by regionalizing the conflict to inflict economic and political pain on its adversaries.